Katy Perry says Dr. Luke never raped, drugged her

Now Katy Perry is spending time in the middle of the never-ending Kesha-Dr. Luke lawsuit It’s all just getting increasingly ugly.

This week’s headlines focus mostly on Katy Perry. She filed an emergency motion early in the week trying to keep her deposition sealed – it’s been rumoured that she accused Dr. Luke of raping her, or at least confided in Kesha about an assault.

Perry wanted to keep her deposition sealed and away from public eyes, as a matter of protecting her image. “The sealing of Ms. Hudson’s deposition testimony is particularly appropriate because disclosure — in light of her public profile — obviously could unfairly affect and even cause ‘significant harm’ to her ‘career and reputation,” according to Perry’s lawyer and as reported by Vulture. He added that her deposition is not directly related to the case at hand.

By Wednesday, however, the court dismissed her appeal and Perry’s testimony was unsealed. The statements were “heavily redacted” but among the information made public: Perry knew Kesha accused Dr. Luke of raping her, but Perry said she was never raped or roofied by him, was never in a sexual relationship with him and never told anyone that he had assaulted her.

Kesha’s attorney now says she and Lady Gaga, in text messages that were read in court earlier this summer, heard from a “major label CEO” that Perry had been raped by Dr. Luke. Billboard identifies this CEO as Geffen A&M Records chair and CEO John Janick, according to Lady Gaga’s testimony.

In his testimony, Janick said he was a bystander to any such conversation, denies taking part of a campaign to tell musicians and others not to work with Dr. Luke due to Kesha’s allegations.

Now Dr. Luke’s team of lawyers is also questioning whether other music industry higher-ups were, in fact, part of such a campaign, including Kesha’s managers, Jack Rovner and Ken Levitan, and Irving Azoff, chair of Full Stop Management.

Back in 2012, when Kesha first claimed the assault and started working to get out of her contract with Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe label, “Rovner emailed Azoff — who was chairman on Live Nation at the time — with an update on their negotiations, asking Azoff to ‘please keep the jihad going’ against Dr. Luke,” to which Azoff replied that Luke would be put “in the penalty box.” Further, he said “Around every corner Luke goes I will be waiting to slap him silly. What an idiot,” Billboard recounts.

All of this prompted a statement from Dr. Luke’s lawyers, saying Kesha was hell-bent on “inciting a deluge of negative media attention and public pressure on the basis of the horrific personal abuses presented in the lawsuit.

“There is nothing worse than abuse and sexual assault. Dr. Luke supports any woman or man who seeks to address sexual abuse in the legal system. That is not what happened here,” the statement reads. “It is also horrendous to falsely accuse someone of a heinous act. That is what has happened here. Kesha’s voluntarily dismissed rape claim has caused great harm to Dr. Luke, his family and his business.”

To which Kesha’s team replied: “Contrary to Dr. Luke’s legal team’s assertion that today’s evidentiary record reveals something Kesha didn’t want the public to see, Kesha has consistently requested that the evidence in this case be unsealed, while Dr. Luke has fought vigorously to keep the evidence from seeing the light of day. Kesha looks forward to defeating Dr. Luke’s meritless $40+ million damage claims at summary judgment or trial.”

There’s one other mostly unrelated snag in all this and it, too, involves Perry and Dr. Luke: He’s credited as one of the writers of her song “Dark Horse,” for which she’s being sued for copyright infringement by Christian hip-hop artist Marcus Grey. If that lawsuit isn’t settled, she’ll have to stand trial and defend their work, according to The Hollywood Reporter.